swallow the lake by clarence major

Swallow the Lake

gave me things I

could not use.   Then.      Now.

Rain night bursting upon and into —

I shine up-down into Lake Michigan

like the glow from the lights of the Loop.

          Walks. Deaths. Births. Streets.

Things I could not give back —

          or use. Gave me loneliness.

Feelings I could not put into words

          into people. Blank monkeys of the hierarchy!

More deaths! Stupidity and death

turning them on, timing them

          to the beat of my droopy heart,

to my Middle Passage blues

to my self-corroding hate —

In my release, I come to become

          neon iron eyes stainless lungs

blood zinc-gripped steel

I come up abstract —

not able to take their bricks.

          Their tar. Their flesh. Their plastic.

I ran — stung.

Loop fumes hung in my smoky lungs.

          Duped, left with ideas I could not break

                or form,

I crawled through the game.

Illusion illusion and you

          would swear before screaming —

these choked voices in me screaming.

Screaming with crawling thing in the blood,

          screaming the huge immune loneliness.

One becomes immune to the bricks

          to the feelings.

One becomes death.

One becomes each one and every person I become.

And I could not —

          I could not —

I could not whistle and walk in storms

along Lake Michigan's shore.

          Concrete walks. Concrete deaths.

I could not —

I could not swallow the lake.

Clarence Major, "Swallow the Lake" from Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958-1998.